Richard Schwier

One of the things we discussed (was it with my students or here?) was the need to do some historical timelines of significant events in educational technology. I recently ran across a few I think you might find interesting:

The History of Virtual Learning Environments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments

History, the History of Computers, and the History of Computers in Education: http://www.csulb.edu/~murdock/histofcs.html

Educational Technology Timeline: http://cgi.duke.edu/~frankbo/edtech02/main.pl?userChoice=history

Do you know of any others?

I also checked out the Wikipedia entry for history of educational technology. It has some significant holes, even from its strictly North American perspective, but it has some good information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology

Also, here is a slideshow that I tripped across. Has some great quotes:
http://www.slideshare.net/randommind/a-brief-history-of-educational-technology/

Do you know of other resources we can add?

After the excellent discussion with Liz Burge today in our SCoPE session, I'm compelled to move our conversation into what this beast can and should look like, and how we can move the project forward. So let's get down to it, put on our hardhats, and discuss some ideas about how this collection should come together.

To lubricate the discussion, I'd like to offer a table of ideas that I extracted from a conversation my graduate students had about the the design of the collection. Their observations are in a table that I've attached to this message. Smart people = excellent recommendations! They include consideration of site design, content, page design and audience engagement.

So what do you think? What should this thing look like and how should it be designed?

Caveat: Keep in mind that we have no budget and only limited volunteer time.

Just so we don't lose the good ideas in a different thread, could I ask this simple question:

Who are people who have a story to tell us about the history of educational technology?

Also, we would welcome you to gather any of these stories you can and contribute them. This is a good place to start, so feel free to add a story here if you have one, or you can gather one for the project.

Now let's consider online museums. There are so many really interesting locations out there, and I'd invite you to share one with us.

Can you find a virtual museum and tell us about it? You might go for the obvious biggies-- the Louvre or Gugenheim and their many offspring, or you can look for the small, quirky and odd.

In fact, you don't even have to look at museums. After all, "museum" is really just a metaphor we are using to describe what we're after in some ways. Think repositories, cool databases, wikis that organize a load of information -- anything that might help us move our ideas forward.

Hey, if "museum" is a metaphor we want to use, what can we learn from great museum experiences we've had in the past?

Let's start by thinking about a good museum you visited -- just one, and your most memorable one. Think about it for a few minutes. What was good about it? What wasn't? What made it interesting? What did you expect to see when you walked in the front doors? What jumped out at you and grabbed your attention when you were there? What parts of the museum did you walk by quickly and not give a second glance? What did you carry away with you when you were finished?